Abstract: Over the past few decades, the animal and nature protection debate has taken on greater importance worldwide, with issues increasingly brought before courts in the name of ‘rights of nature’. In this talk, I address how the idea of considering animals as legal persons has circulated between the United States and India and the implications this circulation has had on framing the strategy of court cases. I first look at how the legal battle led by activist lawyer Steven Wise and his Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) in the United States—around the granting of legal personality to certain animals—has been taken up by an Indian animal rights organisation. I will also show how, in turn, Indian cases raising the question of the legal personhood of animals and rivers have been used by Wise as precedents to argue his case in court. The comparison will thus address how legal ideas and strategies regarding the « rights of nature » travel around the world, giving rise to reciprocal appropriations and possible idealizations.

Speaker:

Daniela Berti is a social anthropologist at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). She is member of PALOC (Patrimoines locaux, environnement et globalisation) and associate member of CESAH (Centre for South-Asian and Himalayan Studies). She coordinates the research programme RULNAT (Ruling on Nature. Animals and the Environment before the Court), funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR). She currently carries out fieldwork on cases dealing with conservation and wildlife management as well as on issues related to animal welfare and animal rights.

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